Tale of two cities with no end in sight

Geoff Meade takes a light-hearted look at life in the European UnionTHE old Euro-stories are the best. You would think that by now people would be fed up with them, but they aren’t. It is not because they are so brilliant that people like to hear them time and time again but because, somehow, ordinary punters still haven’t heard them at all.

European Voice

6/3/98, 5:00 PM CET

Updated 4/12/14, 3:25 AM CET

Wherever you turn, there are people ready, willing and able to be amazed, agog and aghast by the saga of what is known in the jargon as the ‘seat’.

The story of it is one of the longest-running and most enjoyable lunacies to shadow the European Union’s public relations history.

The ‘seat’ sounds neat. It sounds simple. Never has such a complicated dispute been summed up so briefly, in one plain English word, as the issue of what is called in the Treaty of Rome the ‘seat’.

I prefer to call it the ‘site’ because it is easier to latch on to what this problem is all about. But ‘site’ can be as confusing as ‘seat’.

It confused some people I showed round the European Parliament’s Espace Léopold last week. We strolled towards the vast glass prow of the building looming out of Rue Wiertz like a see-through Titanic. “Yes,” they said, gawping all around, “the sight of the Parliament is quite a problem, isn’t it?”

Their eyes grew wider as I explained about the two redundant hemi-cycles in Luxembourg, the one in Strasbourg, this one here in Brussels and, of course, the other new one also in Strasbourg. And, of course, about how half the staff is here and half is in Luxembourg, although there isn’t an operative European Parliament in Luxembourg any more.

Are you still with me? And about how truck-loads of paperwork trundle through the Ardennes on a daily basis, with longer runs to Strasbourg every month.

And about how thousands of people move to Strasbourg for that one week, even though the European Commission is, of course, here in Brussels (in more than 60 buildings – but that’s another story) and, of course, the MEPs’ own offices and committee rooms are here in Brussels too, although, to be fair, they do have duplicate offices in Strasbourg and some committee rooms, with plenty more where they came from when the new Strasbourg building is finished …At this point, newcomers to this very old tale just stare and stare, and say things like: “But that is ludicrous. That is absolutely bloody round the twist. I mean, that’s like, well, it’s like having a parliament operating in, well, at least several different places at once!”

Then you tell them that you haven’t really got started yet. You go on about how the treaty failed to grasp this problem, as did EU leaders, until the Edinburgh summit in 1992 when they carried out their treaty obligations decades late and voted, under excessive French duress, to fix Strasbourg once and for all as the winner of this unseemly race.

“So that’s all right then,” say your visitors. “All’s well that ends well, even if it does seem a funny choice when everything else is in Brussels.”

But you hold up your hand and you say: “Wait! There’s more.” Because, of course, as we all know, there is.

Then you explain how, just a few days before that decision which confounded the wishes of most MEPs, the European Parliament hierarchy took a gamble and signed a lease on the new, incomplete Espace Léopold building.

This committed the Parliament to paying extra squillions a year in rent for the Brussels premises which had just been rejected by EU leaders, on top of the Strasbourg rent and, of course, in addition to the cost of the buildings still occupied in Luxembourg.

So by now the race was on amongst supporters of Brussels as the ‘seat’ to think up more and more reasons why a dozen or so plenary sessions a year in Strasbourg were insufficient.

By now, those new to this tale of bungled rivalry and monumental riches are on the edges of their … seats. “Is it really true,” they enquire, “that taxpayers are paying squillions in annual rent in Brussels and also squillions in annual rent in Strasbourg?”

Nowadays, I just nod serenely, as if having two grown-up cities competing shamelessly to provide the biggest, the best, the flashest, the grandest of democratic facilities is the most natural thing in the world. And, of course, to anyone who has become a more or less permanent fixture on the Euro-circuit, it is.

The fact is that the issue of the ‘seat’ has become unremarkable. The financial excesses of the ‘seat’ have become as acceptable as calling pigs “grain-consuming units”, which is what Eurocrats do, according to the Plain English Campaign.

Indeed, for those steeped in Euro-lore, the ‘seat’ is as much part of daily life as calling a pram a “wheeled vehicle designed for the transport in a seated or semi-recumbent position of one or two babies or infants who are placed inside a body of boat or box-like shape, but does not include any carry-cot or transporter therefor” – which is another example of Euro-gobbledegook.

To put it in plain English, the ‘seat’ has become part of the furniture.

That is why it is worth the bother of telling the story to outsiders at least once a month, just to keep in touch with reality and remind ourselves how mad it all is.

My latest visitors certainly thought so, so I switched their attention to the Plain English Campaign, which was in Brussels that day fighting the advance of Euro-gobbledegook.

The organisation’s director Chrissie Maher is trying to encourage the Commission to write in plain English so that trees don’t become “indigenous vegetation” and shelf-stackers in supermarkets remain just that and don’t turn into “ambient replenishment assistants”.

For her, I suppose, the ‘seat’ is about as plain as English can be.

It wasn’t plain to my visitors. They were still reeling from working out the following sum: “If 700 people drive up and down between Brussels and Strasbourg unnecessarily at least 12 times a year for 20 years on expenses, what is the gross domestic product of Burundi?”